DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

Cristina Codina is a Spanish Lecturer at Northwestern University. She has a doctorate in Education, Administration and Leadership in Higher Education from Aurora University, she has a master's degree in Spanish Language and Literatures from Loyola University in Chicago and a bachelor's degree in Education from the University of Illinois in Chicago. She has worked as a Spanish teacher in Chicago public schools and suburban Illinois schools for 8 years, in addition to working as an adjunct Spanish professor at various universities in and around Chicago, where she has taught beginning-level Spanish courses, Spanish for heritage speakers, and courses on the Cuban diaspora, since one of its main lines of research is based on the bilingual and bicultural experience of Spanish speakers in the United States of Afro-Cuban origin. Apart from speaking Spanish and English, Cristina has an advanced level of Portuguese. In 2022 she founded an NGO called Edúcate Mamá, dedicated to empowering mothers living in poverty in Peru.  

She received an Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012. She also has received poetry awards from DePaul University and University of Illinois at Chicago. 

Her teaching focuses on Art-based pedagogy. In Spain she studied Fine Arts in a professional studio for 5 years. When she lived in Peru, she studied Andean ethnography and ethnology. Thus, her teaching strategies incorporate diverse cultural perspectives, practices, and products, integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in her teaching methodology through an artistic lens. 

In her free time, she enjoys cooking food from around the world, learning foreign languages, painting, writing poetry and appreciating nature. 

Publications: 

• Codina, Cristina. A metamorphosis: The embodiment of dance within an autoethnographical framework. Diss. Aurora University, 2021. 
• Codina, Cristina. La tranformación espiritual en" Las lágrimas de la Magdalena" de Lope de Vega. Diss. Loyola University Chicago, 2016.